Halter Training Victor – 10th September 2011

I’ve just got in from a monring session of training Victor (Mignon Velvet), the adorable miniature shetland pony foal we have.

Today he was very lively; jumping everywhere, annoying the mares (Morjoy Tulip and Hermits Velvet Rose) and rolling about on the wet grass. Luckily for our stallion, (Goldsytch Gradbach), Victor chose to ignore him.

I got his head collar on fairly easy, although he was quite high-spirited and didn’t exactly stand still on the first attempt. Once the foal slip (which his and Rosie’s previous owner very kindly let us have for training him) was on I let him run around a bit before attaching the lead rope.

I’ve only attached the lead rope to his collar twice before, and he’s still a little bit confused about it, espcially the extra weight under his chin. He tries to shake it off, which is quite amusing to watch, and when that fails, he’ll pick up the rope with his mouth, whilst I’m still holding onto it and pull.

Today I only kept the lead rope on him for about five minutes or so, before I took it off and stood watching him and how he behaved with just his head collar on. And how does he behave? Much the same as when he hasn’t got it on. He’s duffinately a lively, playful foal. He went racing around the field, jumping, kicking, bucking, flicking his back legs in the air and then lay down and rolled, before creeping up to annoy his mum, Rosie.

After that I took his head collar off and played with him for a bit (I never leave his head collar on if he’s not supervised, the same with the other ponies).

And as I was walking up to the gate, I suddenly heard somethign behind me… Whirling around I caught Victor just about to nip me. He looked at me playfully before running in circles around me, kicking his back legs. After a few minutes he ran back down to the bottom of the field where the rest of the ponies were.